"I wouldn't worry about the world if I were you," I continued, as he led the way to the elevator. "It is really not worth while. If the devil wants it, I'd let him have it. I can think of no greater punishment you could inflict upon him than to make him a present of it. It were equivalent to England giving Canada to the United States for meddling in the Venezuelan matter. Perhaps you know your business best, but I have lived the longest. I used to think that perhaps the world would pay the salvage for saving it; but that was before I moved to Waco. I tell you frankly that if I had your job in the New Jerusalem I'd nurse it and let Bob Ingersoll, Doc Talmage and the rest of the noisy blatherskites scrap it out here to suit themselves." He did not reply, and the editor, remembering that his advice had not been asked, changed the subject. "I'm not going to steer you against a first-class hotel. Jim I. Moore wouldn't let you into his dining-room with your shoes off, even though you brought a letter of credit from the Creator. Jim loves you dearly, but business is business. There's a place down here, however, run by a man who doesn't trot with the sanctified set, where you can waltz up to the feed trough in the same suit you wore when you preached the Sermon on the Mount, and that without giving the ultra-fashionables a case of the fantods." "Ah, there we will doubtless meet with many of the good brethren who do not observe empty forms and foolish ceremonies." "Rather. But perhaps I should tell you that the church does not approve of the place where we are going. They er--sell wine there you know; also that amber liquid with the--er--froth on it." "And why not wine?" "Damfino--I mean--Oh, you'll have to ask Brother Cranfill. I s'pose because old Noah jagged up on it." "Noah who?" "Why just Noah; that old stiff--I mean that good man who was saved for seed, when the overflow came, and who's the great gran'daddy of all the niggers." "Is it possible that the church is retailing that wretched old myth which my Hebrew fathers borrowed of the barbarians. Noah? There was no such man. By the shifting of the earth's axis about 16,000 years ago a portion of the Asiatic continent was overflowed." "But the Noah story is in the Bible." "So is the story of Adam and Eve, and many other absurdities which really intelligent people would purge it of. O will men be mental children ever!"